Combining Micro Data Sets to Study Immigration from Mexico to the US.

Current empirical studies on immigration of Mexicans to the US have failed to obtain whether Mexicans are positively or negatively selected from the Education distribution from Mexico, either due to lack of representa-tive data or because of the use of wrong econometric techniques. This paper uses consistent and efficient methods to combine two micro data sets representative of Mexicans living both in the US and Mexico: the Current Population Service and the Encuesta Nacional de Ingreso de los Hogares. The sample includes males between the ages of 25 to 65 years old, which are in the labor force, or are discouraged workers, and unpaid family members. The US sample only includes individuals that enter the US at 15 years old or more. By selecting this sample, the study focuses in individuals that are less likely to have obtained their education in the US, after immigrating, and that migrated to obtain a job, even if they end up being unemployed. The results show that there is a positive relation be-tween education and migration between 0 and 11 years of education. After which, the relation became negative. These findings reject the notion of negative selection, and support the idea that individuals that migrate from Mexico have medium levels of education by Mexican standards, but still low levels of education by US standards.